Part 38 (1/2)

”It ain't your fault, no.”

”Look me in the face, sir.”

He stared at me from the iron bench on which he was seated, perhaps unsure whether my request had contained a veiled insult.

”Tell me again you didn't know Bello Lujan a.s.saulted your daughter,” I said.

”A man who got to repeat himself don't respect his own word,” he said.

He looked at the tops of his shoes.

”I suspect your bail could be as high as a quarter million dollars. Do you have any kind of collateral you can offer the court?” I said.

”No, suh, I t'ink I'm gonna be here awhile.”

His intuitions were probably more accurate than he knew. He was in the maw of the system, and anyone who has been caught in it, the guilty or innocent or hapless alike, will be the first to tell you that justice is indeed blind. ”I hope it comes out all right for you, sir,” I said.

”Nothing gonna come out all right. Ain't no way to turn it around now.”

”What do you mean it can't be turned around?”

”I lost my farm and bidness when the gov'ment let in all that sugar from Central America. Ain't fair to put all that cheap sugar on the market. Ain't nothing like it used to be. Li'l people ain't got no chance.”

His linkage of his own fate to economic factors was probably self-serving, if not self-pitying, and his condemnation of the world for his own misfortune was the stuff of grandiosity. But who can fault a man with no legs for not being able to run?

”I'm going to see what I can do,” I said.

”About what?” he said, his eyes lifting to mine.

MOLLY WAS WAs.h.i.+NG her car under the porte cochere when I got home. She wore a pair of blue-jean shorts and an old white s.h.i.+rt that was too tight for her shoulders, and her clothes and hair and skin were damp from the garden hose she was spraying on the car's surface while she wiped it down with a rag. Molly's physical firmness, the curvature of her hips, the way her rump flexed against her shorts, the suggestion of s.e.xual power in her thighs and the swell of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, all reminded me of my dead wife Bootsie, and I sometimes wondered if Bootsie's spirit had not slipped inside Molly's skin, as though the two women who had not known each other in life had melded together and formed a third personality after Bootsie's death.

But I didn't care where Molly came from, as long as she remained in my life, and I loved her as much as I did Bootsie, and I loved them both at the same time and never felt a contradiction or a moment of disloyalty about my feelings.

”Come scratch my back, will you?” Molly said. ”A mosquito about six inches long got under my s.h.i.+rt.”

She propped her arms on the car's roof while I moved my nails back and forth across her shoulder blades. The water from the hose continued to run, spilling back across her fist, trailing down her forearm. She s.h.i.+fted her weight and her rump brushed against my loins.

”I had to put Cesaire Darbonne in jail today,” I said. ”I suspect he'll be arraigned tomorrow for capital murder.”

”Uh-huh,” she said, gazing abstractedly through the shadows in the backyard.

”The guy's broke. He'll probably stay in lockdown out at the stockade.”

”And?” she said, removing a strand of damp hair from her eye.

”No bondsman will touch him with a dung fork, at least not without collateral.”

”You hurt my feelings,” she said.

”Pardon?”

She rolled her shoulders to indicate I should continue scratching her back. ”I thought you were putting moves on me to get me into the sack,” she said.

”I'm not above doing that.”

She deliberately hit me with her rump. ”You want to go his bond?” she said.

”I'll have to put up the house and lot. They're half yours.”

”Not really, but whatever you want to do is fine with me,” she said.

She turned around, stood on my shoes, and hugged me.

”What's that for?” I said.

”I won't tell you,” she said, then continued was.h.i.+ng her car.

AFTER SUPPER, I drove to Clete's cottage at the motor court. He had closed all the blinds and was sitting barefoot on his bed, dressed in a pair of elastic-waisted khakis and a strap unders.h.i.+rt, reaming out the barrel of a .38 revolver with a bore brush. His television set was tuned to The Weather Channel, the sound turned off. A shaded lamp burned on the nightstand, and under its glow were a can of oil, his sap, a throw-down .22 piece of junk with tape on the wood grips, a six-inch stiletto, and a nine-millimeter Beretta that carried a fourteen-round magazine. I took a can of Dr Pepper out of his icebox and sat down in a straight-back wood chair across from him.

”Expecting the Union Army to come up the Teche?” I said.

”A bud inside NOPD called me and said I'm about to get picked up for destroying the casino. I rented a camp out in the Atchafalaya Basin. Time to do a survey on the goggle-eye perch population,” he replied.

Then I made a mistake. I told him about all the recent events involving the deaths of Yvonne Darbonne, Crustacean Man, and Tony and Bello Lujan. I told him about the scam Trish Klein and her crew had pulled on Whitey Bruxal. I also told him about Slim Bruxal's implication that his father and Lefty Raguza might decide to take their pound of flesh.

Clete wiped the oil off the blue-black surfaces of his .38, then flipped the cylinder from the frame and began inserting cartridges one by one into the chambers, his blond eyelashes lowered so I could not read his eyes.

”I can hear your wheels turning, Clete. Forget about it,” I said.

”I'm glad I've finally heard the voice of G.o.d. You can actually go into people's heads now and explain their own thoughts to them.”

”Don't be a smart-a.s.s. I'm trying to-”

He cut me off before I could continue. ”We used to do business one way with these a.s.sholes-under a black flag. Why do you think Whitey Bruxal is here? It's because he gets a free pa.s.s. In the old days, at least he would have been under the control of the Giacanos. Now he can kick the s.h.i.+t out of cerebral palsy victims and be on the Society page.”

”You don't think NOPD can find you in a fis.h.i.+ng camp? Use your brain,” I said.

He spun the cylinder on the .38, the b.u.t.t end of the loaded cartridges glinting in the light. His green eyes were bright and happy, free of alcoholic influence or fatigue, and I realized when he didn't reply that I hadn't listened carefully to what he had said and I had once again misread the complexities of an ant.i.thetically mixed man.

”You were already planning to take out Whitey Bruxal, weren't you?” I said.

”Not exactly. But if these guys make a move on us, we hunt them down and pitch the rule book. What's to lose? We're dinosaurs anyway. The only guys who haven't figured that out are us. Pop me a beer, will you?”

He laid a clear line of oil along the side of the Beretta, then wiped all of its surfaces clean with a rag. He pulled back the slide on an empty magazine and ran the bore brush up and down the inside of the barrel, smiling at me while he did it. In the muted glow of the lamplight he looked like a young man again, one who still believed the world was a magical place full of adventure and goodness and intriguing encounters up every street. In moments like these I sometimes wondered if Clete had ever intended to age and grow old and change from the irresponsible man of his youth, if indeed he had not always courted death as a means of tearing off the hands on his own clock.

”Why you looking at me like that?” he asked.

”No reason.”

”You worry about all the wrong things, Streak. In this case, about me and Trish. All that stuff you told me about the Lujan murders and Crustacean Man and the Darbonne girl? There's something missing. This character in the D.A.'s office, what's his name?”